Written by Sally Wainwright and directed by the excellently named China Moo-Young, S&B is very much a TV series about everyday police work through a female perspective.

But you can take things too far. Scott & Bailey is almost a deliberate antidote to anything too far-fetched or exciting.

It starts with the title: Scott & Bailey sounds like a smug estate agents, a trendy-but-twee set of face creams, or a brand of posh paint.

It’s also something of a misnomer because S&B is really about three women: Scott, Bailey and their boss DCI Gill Murray (Amelia Bullmore).

Now, I like all three of these actors – particularly Suranne Jones. But it would have been nice if their characters could have been given a few problems that weren’t so predictably domestic for them to get their teeth into.

Scott has her busy-body of a mother living at home and a husband threatening to walk out, leaving her working on the force at the same time as bringing up two kids.

Having dealt with the issue of unwanted pregnancy in the first series, Bailey now has to cope with the unexpected arrival of her brother.

“If my boss knew that my brother was a convicted armed robber and I had him living here…” she spelt it out to him - for us.

DCI Murray meanwhile has the predictable problem of controlling a team full of men.

As if this all didn’t scream “Women’s Issues” at you enough, the details did. The opening scene took place in the ladies' loo, with Bullimore putting her lipstick on.

Jones made a joke about the Tampax machine and Sharp was moaning about doing the school run.

You longed for one of them to have a gambling addiction like Cracker or knock back a whisky or 8 like Rebus.

The actual CASE they were working on was perfectly decent – if you like that kind of thing (which I do).

The victim had been tortured, and set on fire – with a dog collar round his neck. Nice. Or rather, unpleasant.

Except we didn’t see much of it. Certainly not as much as we would have in Silent Witness or Waking The Dead.

Even when they interviewed the suspect (Mandy Dingle from Emmerdale), Scott & Bailey were annoyingly nice.

Suranne Jones even did the classic TV ‘tecs trick of shouting out her name from 50 yards away so that the suspect would flee, provoking a chase.

None of this means that Scott & Bailey don’t make for perfectly harmless, typical Monday viewing.

Their work didn’t stop the culprit killing two more victims, during the course of their investigation though.

In that respect, Scott & Bailey are just the same as all TV detectives: fairly useless.